Day 42

Pretty excited today because tomorrow brings the announcement of the 2011 Tour de France route.  It's going to finish in the Alps, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the race going through the Alps, so there should be some pretty hard and iconic climbs in this year's Alps.  To get a taste for a day in the Alps, this past July 11th, I rode an approximation of that day's route from Station des Rousses to Morzine-Avoriaz.  Two cat 4's, one cat 3, and two cat 1 climbs over 189km.  So how did this look in Vancouver?  187.58km and 9,691ft of climbing.  I tried to find a close simulation of the distances between the categorized climbs and the length and grade of the climbs themselves.  So I left Kits beach, went out towards UBC and did a couple of laps on the hill up to UBC, then out to Iona beach and back to the UBC hill for 3 more laps, then out to North Van via the Lions Gate bridge, across the North Shore, and up Seymour two and a half times, then back to Kits via Stanley Park.  The ride took just over 8.5 hours, but it was good to get a feel for what I'll be looking at each day for 3 weeks next summer.

As for tonight's ride, it was another quiet, peaceful night.  It's so crisp and fresh at night, I'm amazed I'm the only one out!  Tonight the moon was really bright and it lit up the road, silhouetting the tree line around campus (as is obvious from the stunning photo below!).  28.29km in 1:06:26, for an avg speed of 26km/h.   ride details and map